Excuses, Birthday Celebrations and Getting Back on Top of Things

So like wow. when did i last update this site?

I'm finding it so difficult at the moment. I kind of feel i've got two choices. I usually like to take some time and think about what I'm going to put on here (yeah, i know you wouldn't think so, reading this). But I'm just too bunged these days. I've gone for option A recently - just hope for a gap and a bit of time to update, but now i'm going for option B - quick updates, just throwing on whatever i can at the time.

After all, my typical week at the moment is: Monday - solid day at work, then swimming in the evening then the Old Fitzroy pub for a Laksa dish (spicey seafood soup/noodles) and then i do my washing and ironing and catch an episode of the sopranos. Tuesday is usually meetings and then i have a salsa class after work, which sometimes goes on to Equilibrium - a bar in town. Wednesday is a good night for skyping home and catching up with email and facebook, though i sometimes go to a friend's for dinner. Thursday is mental - busy at work, always meet a friend for lunch, then biathlon after work, then the Thursday Night Grumpy Old Men's Drinking Session, which sometimes (but as rarely as i can get away with) ends up in Loaded at World Bar until 2am... and beyond... Friday is quieter at work. After work i sometimes catch a drink and sometimes go to squad swimming at Bondi. Occassionally Friday night is a night out (tomorrow night is a karaoke night) and then Saturday morning is always swimming at Bondi. Saturday i like to go into town and do something different and there's usually something on at night. Sunday is sometimes recovery time, and catching up. Recently Sunday morning has been swimming competitions. Sunday night is always salsa night - starts early and goes on late. And then before i know it, i'm getting up for Monday morning again.

So that's been life since India. And that's my excuse for not updating the website. Having gone on about that for length i feel i never need another excuse! Back to the blog...

Is there a link between jetlag and age? Having just reached the grand old age of 29 (for the sixth time), I’m inclined to say that yes, there is. It took me a good week to recover from the jetlag and fatigue of the India trip and another week to really get back into top gear. My sleeping patterns were all over the place, I felt unsettled in Sydney (a first!) and was struggling to do anything constructive other than work (updating the website didn’t get a look in). But by the 10th of February I was back to my usually cheery ‘life in Sydney is awesome’ self. And I had a pretty good birthday. The ‘main event’ was my first ocean swim. After turning down a good few swims through bad weather, unfortunate clashes with spectacular evenings-out, and sheer terror at the thought of swimming out into the sea, I eventually committed to doing the North Bondi classic on the morning of the 10th. I took my preparation seriously. By which, I don’t mean I did a lot of swimming – though I did a fair bit. More crucially I curtailed my alcohol intake (no, really) at the Reid family barbecue on the Saturday. Chris’ folks, and his sister Natalie are over from Ireland/London for a few weeks and Chris had a bit of a gathering on the Saturday night. It was interesting to see people getting drunker and drunker as I restricted myself to half-a-dozen beers and an early trip home. And that ‘training’ paid-off. I actually found the swim to be ok. I took it easy at the start and paced myself the whole way, to finish the 2km distance in 48:03 with some energy left in the tank, as is hopefully evident from the following picture:[link] I was 498th out of 697, in other words almost 200 people finished slower than me, so I was delighted. Being very competitive I’m also driven to go faster and further the next time. I’ve since taken a couple of swimming classes and have started pounding up and down the pool after work. I think all the exercise helped get over the India fatigue too.

And wow, it really paid off. Just a week later, I did my second ocean swim. This was also preceeded by a big barbeque, this time at my place! Even so, i managed a great swim, totally demolishing my previous time. This time I managed 37:10 and I was in the top half for my age group. My competitive streak isn't getting any weaker... So, my birthday itself was fairly tame - though there was a visit to the pub on the Sunday evening too. But only because the big event was planned for the following Saturday. Since having a memorable day out at Randwick Racecourse on boxing day, I'd been looking for an excuse to go back. Handily enough there was a race-meeting just a few days (or so) after my birthday. It was a great day-out and a fair crowd of us enjoyed open-air beers/cocktails, and the opportunity to lose a few bucks on a couple of attractive fillies. Actually, the winning rate amongst us was pretty low. We might have been better advised to check out the childrens entertainment as its difficult to lose much money with Barney the Dinosaur (though I’ve heard he has a real mean poker face).

The rest of February has been pretty good. I'm always trying to strike a balance between work (which I care deeply about, and what to do as well in as I have the capability to), socialising (never usually difficult to get motivated for!), keeping fit and healthy and fitting in all my hobbies and relaxing (always difficult to fit in!). I seem to have at last managed to strike that balance. But sometimes it feels like juggling clubs. Clubs with blades on the end. And the blades are on fire. And someone keeps throwing an extra one in, now and again. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Trip to India Week 2: Best Week at Work Ever???

With apologies for the long delay, I should really finish off the story of the India trip. The story picks up from the middle weekend when Stephen came down with the lurgy.

As our trip to Hyderabad was cancelled we had a bit more time to hang around Lucknow – well I had more time to hang around Lucknow, while Stephen – poor soul – was confined to bed.

I had an interesting wander around town on India’s national holiday, and it was clear to me after just a couple of hours looking around, that Lucknow isn’t a particularly prosperous Indian city. That said, even in Lucknow there is a notable split between the haves and the have-nots. We were staying in the best hotel in town – a huge colonial style building on three floors, with large landscaped gardens and a huge pool in the grounds. Perfect for a wedding. In fact there were three pretty impressive wedding receptions at the hotel when I was there.

The photo at the top of this entry is of an Indian pipeband that I bumped into on our third night. Now there is some dispute as to where the bagpipes were invented. Scottish people will tell you that, like most good things… the television, the pneumatic tyre, the Presbyterian denomination, the bagpipes were invented in Scotland. But I’ve also heard from a less biased source that the bagpipes were played in India more than a thousand years ago. Though the guys playing at the wedding reception didn’t speak any English - and I couldn’t say much in Hindi - just by impersonating a piper I was able to make them laugh. It tickled me anway.

And if those guys like overly well wrapped up for India, they were certainly better equipped for the weather than I was. The last time I had been in Delhi was as a tourist in June last year when it was 37C, and after that experience I associated Delhi with the heat. I just kinda assumed it was pretty warm all year round. So I packed one small suitcase with my Sydney summer clothes in it. Which meant that I had a large number of short-sleeved shirts, a couple of long-sleeved shirts, no jumpers, no jacket. And then we walked out of the airport and there were local guys with gloves and balaclavas on…

The other good thing about being stuck in the hotel in Lucknow was that it did give us time to practise a bit of Hindi. Stephen and I found that our most popular phrases were Moo jay yay sum a jee na hee aye (I don’t understand), Deerie deerie (slowly slowly) and Sa hie ta kee-jee-yi! (help!).

My absolute favourite expression was Gulab Jamun. This is a very sweet doughy dessert which is fried and served in a warm syrupy sugar sauce. It doesn’t look like much in the picture below (!!) but if you have a sweet tooth they are awesome.

I’ll finish this account of the Indian adventure with one of the stories from the Ashram, which is just incredible. One of the cheeriest guys we met there was a guy called Sarin. He had spinal TB – a really serious condition – and had been on his back at the Ashram, unable to walk for 10 months. The photo below is one that Stephen took of Sarin when we were there on the 21st of February. This is Sarin getting some fresh air, with a puppy that he seemed to have adopted.

A few days after Stephen and I got back to Australia, we were sent the following photo from Kaye, one of the two leaders of the Ashram. This is Sarin on his feet for the first time in 10 months. Just incredible. If it wasn’t for the Ashram, these things wouldn’t be happening.

I joined Opportunity because I believe microfinance is the best hope of providing a sustainable solution to helping the poor.

But I don’t think it’s the only solution.

Where something works, I think it should be supported. And it’s been great to be involved in the Ashram project. Even better to be involved with this sort of thing having seen the country, the poverty and the people first-hand.

Work Trip to India (Week 1 - A tale of two cities… and feeling kinda sh*tty)

In my previous life, as an economics advisor to the Scottish Government, one of the disappointing factors of the job was that I was pretty much tied to my desk. Interaction with the outside world was rather limited and work trips took me as far as…. Leeds. Southampton once. And Cumbernauld on more occasions than I was entirely comfortable with.

But that was a previous life, one which seems a pretty distant memory now as I write this in my hotel room in Lucknow, deepest Uttar Pradesh.

Without getting too technical, this work trip has two main goals for me. Firstly, I’m meeting with an organisation that I hope to work with to design and test a new survey programme for estimating the impact we have on clients in India – are we reaching the poorest people, are we moving them out of poverty? Secondly, I’m meeting with healthcare providers here to discuss the possibility of partnering with them to improve healthcare provision for our clients in India.

It was Indian National Day on the Saturday, celebrating the creation of the constitution on the 26th of January 1950. All public buildings were decked in impressive glad rags!

And there are other benefits to the trip too. Not least that I’m getting to meet some of the people who are working in microfinance and poverty relief on the ground in India, and I’m getting to meet some of the people that we’re helping.

My colleague Stephen and I are travelling together. Stephen has a few projects of his own that he’s hoping to make progress with here. The first of these turned out to be incredibly interesting, and has given me the chance to make a contribution on something which seems valuable beyond measure when compared with the types of projects we usually get to be involved with in our working lives.

On the first day of the trip we visited the Sewa Ashram, a refuge for the destitute homeless people of Delhi. The Ashram has about 120 inhabitants who have been ‘saved’ from the streets of Delhi where they live in conditions which are unimaginable to you or I. Half the patients have TB (a horrible and deadly condition, which has been forgotten by the developed world, even though it still continues to kill a million of the poorest people in the world every year), and one in ten are HIV positive.

It was really humbling to see the work done by Nino and Kaye, the German and Canadian managers who run the Ashram. Their work is unbelievable – quite simply I couldn’t ever do it. I’m not sure many people could. We also met a large number of the patients in the Ashram, many of whom are ill and bedridden, but many others of whom have been rehabilitated and are now gaining confidence and dignity in the community atmosphere of the Ashram, and even contributing, through basic activities such as making jewellery, painting canvases and growing vegetables.

We were there to talk to the managers about an idea they have to relocate and expand the Ashram to accommodate five times as many inhabitants. The need for help is, sadly, far far greater than the supply of care…

The day was really interesting, really educational in terms of finding out just what individuals’ needs are when they have been completely abandoned by society. Stephen and I undertook to draw up a proposal for a new Ashram. The idea of the proposal is to put some detailed plans together (eg setting out resources (money, people, assistance) needed), which will help the Ashram to raise the money and assistance it needs to make their vision happen.

We spent a lot of the rest of the week drawing up a draft proposal and will meet with the Ashram again before we leave India, by which point the proposal should be pretty well advanced. After seeing the people at the Ashram, it’s hard to imagine feeling more motivated about a piece of work.

On day four we flew to Lucknow. Lucknow is the administrative capital of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. If Uttar Pradesh (ooh-tar praa-desh) were a country on its own, it would be the fourth largest country in the world by population… and one of the poorest. There is a large north-south divide in India, with the southern states experiencing the greatest benefits of India’s economics boom (but there is poverty in the south too) whereas economic activity in the north is weaker, and the poor poorer.

Left: Stephen tucks into lunch. Was this the dodgy meal...?

We visited a start-up microfinance organisation where they have just a few thousand clients now, but are hoping to expand rapidly. Stephen and I provided a bit of IT consultancy, though my contribution was restricted to “switch it off, leave it 10 seconds and then try switching it on again”. Well not quite, but I certainly didn’t feel as useful as I had at the Ashram. I also went to visit Emmanuel Hospital Association, an association of 20 mission hospitals, which provides healthcare to an amazing number of poor people (600,000+) for an amazingly small budget ($5m). Had a very interesting meeting which I hope to follow up on later.

At the end of the first week we unfortunately ran out of luck on the ‘Delhi Belly’ front. We had been quite adventurous, trying a few new Indian dishes. Stephen was more cautious than me, so it was sod’s law when he came down with stomach cramps on the Saturday morning. This lasted a good 48 hours at the last checking and we’ve had to call off our trip to Hyderabad, which is a shame, but totally understandable. I think Stephen is coping with it pretty well. I know I go pear-shaped at the slightest hint of ‘man-flu’.

Here’s hoping for better health in our second week, and another chance to make a contribution to the Ashram.

Please do visit the website of the Ashram. If you have the chance, read the document on the ‘Urban Destitute’. It contains incredible stories, that you wouldn’t imagine possible in 2008. It’s a hard read, but well worth it.
www.sewa-ashram.org

Ahhh, no. Wait a minute. I think I've spotted the dodgy meal...

... those goat brains aren't as succelent as you might think.

Super Jumbo Smashing Great

The Airbus A380. Actually, 'the' Airbus A380. This is perhaps the future of air-travel. But at the moment, there's only one in service in the world.

I'm in Delhi. The last time I updated the website from India was exactly six months ago, in very different circumstances. I'm now here with work! I'm on a 12 day trip to visit some organisations that Opportunity International has been working with, or is looking to work with in the future.

I'll shortly have plenty to say about the trip itself I'm sure. It's only the end of day one, but already it's been a great experience. But it is only the end of day one. So I'll say nothing more about India yet.

Instead, I'll start from last week. Pre-departure prep was eventful in itself. Last week I worked like a dog and was in the office at 7am more than once.

Having never felt more motivated at work, it wasn’t hard to do.

I needed to fuse the wires a bit after that week and went out for a (fairly) big one on the Friday night with Ed. Good night. Got up the next morning for my Saturday morning ocean swim. I enjoyed this as much as ever, really pushing myself under grey skies. I was amazed by the visibility in the water, out beyond the waves. It was incredible, the light reaching right down to the sandy bottom far below. Far clearer than I’ve seen before at Bondi.

In contrast, the weather was poor and the by the end of the session the grey skies had turned dark and soon raindrops were pebbling the waves. It didn’t feel cold to me, but I guess it was. In any event, the next morning I woke up completely bunged, with a sore throat, and generally feeling rubbish. More than anything, I couldn’t believe the timing.

Due to fly to India the next day.

Visiting a centre for the most destitute, disease-prone people in India the day after that.

I snuffled my way through Sunday, doing a few hours work, meeting up with a couple of friends and eventually washing, ironing and packing at the very last minute, finally getting to bed just before midnight with a horrible sicky feeling that the 6am start would not be a pleasant one.

But then I caught a break.

I woke the next morning having – as usual – allowed myself 12 minutes between getting out of bed and leaving the house. When I have to get up early, I won’t get up any earlier than absolutely necessary. If you can shave, shower (do the other sh…), apply deodorant and aftershave, dress, check keys (wallet and ipod), leave the house and lock up in 12 minutes – and you can, if you want to, you can – why would you get up any earlier?

I think I was at the getting dressed stage before I realised I felt fine. Not just fine but great. Cold gone. You could say someone was looking out for me. It certainly seemed miraculous in my vocabulary.

My day improved to the power of about six when I got a more than pleasant surprise at the airport. After a lengthy weight for check in, and a rather uncomfortable delay in the departure lounge, my flight was at last called, slightly after the scheduled departure time. As I made my way to the tunnel to board the aircraft, I glanced at the front of the plane and it looked, well… …funny. A bit different. And boy was it.

For 40 years, the Boeing ‘Jumbo’ 747 has been one of a select number of celebrated icons that have come to symbolise technological progress in the modern age. It is a colossus of popular culture, one of just a few ‘objets’ that have grown to embody the ingenuity of man and the simultaneously shrinking and growing world that we live in at the end of the 20th Century and start of the 21st.

But as of the end of January 2008, there was one (and still only one) commercial aircraft in the world that could top the 747. There can’t be anyone with even a passing interest in planes, flying, or even just travel generally, who doesn’t know all about the Airbus A380 Superjumbo. At last, after four empty decades, we have something that can show some progress in our mastery of the skies (Concorde aside… which I love, but which in all honesty had a rather limited impact in the history of passenger flight).

You can see how these two stories are converging. But before that, I just have to point out again that there really is only one aircraft that tops the 747 right now. Not just one model, but one plane. Due to well-publicised problems in production, Airbus were only able to deliver the first A380 to launch-customer, Singapore Airlines, in October 2007. And they have yet to deliver another… to anyone. The plane only flies one route, and even that route it shares with a number of other aircraft.

So I was exceptionally lucky to be one of the first few hundred-thousand people to fly the A380. And if you think that sounds less than impressive, bear in mind that there have been more than a billion passengers have flown in a 747.

Anyway, enough fluff and bluster, what was it actually like?

Singapore Airlines configuration allows for just 471 seats from a maximum possible of 800. So there was plenty of room. In this first aircraft, some seats are omitted, almost at random it seems, which adds to the sense of spaciousness. Plus, for a double-decker aircraft, the headroom was phenomenal. I’m looking up and thinking, how can the ceiling be so high, when there’s another couple of hundred seats above my head? And then there are the wings. They are colossal. Anyone with a window seat anywhere from row 33 way back to row 49 is sitting at the wing.

But though some things seemed bizarrely big, a lot of other areas looked pretty similar to any other wide-bodied aircraft. The toilets, for example, are just as pokey as ever, and bizarrely – given that the flight was only a third full – there didn’t seem to be enough of them.

And yes, you did hear right. The plane was a third-full at best. I think it’s about eight years since I was last on a long-haul flight that was so empty. Maybe it was the day of the week, or the time of year, but it seemed frankly bizarre that the plane designed to increase global air-passenger capacity should start its life with so many empty seats.

But for me, that didn’t detract from the experience, but rather did much to enhance it as I was able to switch seats and move about the plane freely.

Not that you would feel the need, as the seats were extra comfy. Like a good recliner chair (and unlike any other economy class seat I’ve experienced), the base part tilts as you recline the seat back. And then – as can be seen in the next picture – there’s the entertainment system. The best feature of the new system – narrowly beating the USB port for charging your ipod, and keyboard for creating word/excel docs – is the huge, high-resolution widescreen display. I’d swear my old laptop had a screen about that size, and I used to voluntarily watch movies on that.

Talking of which, I caught the 2007 Australian film “Noise” on the flight to Singapore. What an exceptional piece of cinema. This is one of the most beautifully filmed (and soundtracked) films I’ve seen in years. I can’t wait to see what the director, Matthew Saville, does next – you will hear of him again. It’s great that the Australian arts/film scene is capable of something so wonderful, when television in Australia is so appalling.

On the later flight from Singapore to New Delhi I watched Ratatouille. One of the best pieces of cinema I’ve seen in years. In fact, I’m going to come right out and say it. No messing. Without a word of a lie, it was even better than Toy Story 2. Seriously though, I can’t recommend Ratatouille enough. The story and script are as good as you could ever hope for and beautifully put together with drawing and animation that are probably better than any other animated film to date.

Anyway, back to the A380. With the seatbelt signs on and the safety demonstration underway (it was tempting to pinch one of the safety cards as a souvenir, but I resisted), I peered out over the huge wings and could just discern we had started taxiing toward the runway. Take-off itself was the quietest by far that I’ve ever experienced. The engines are super-quiet and you begin to worry that there has been some kind of thrust failure before the plane gently and undramatically lifts into the sky. A little disconcerting the first time to be honest, but definitely something you could sleep through in future.

After take-off we were quickly served a meal, a Sinaporean dish that was easily the best in-flight meal I’ve had, and close to a proper restaurant meal. One less visible, but well appreciated feature of the plane was the air-conditioning. Usually on long-haul flights you get off the plane feeling like you’ve been lightly poached, like an overly-healthy breakfast egg-option. Not here. If I was breathing another two hundred peoples’ germs, it certainly didn’t feel like it.

You can probably guess by now that I’m quite excited about the Airbus A380. And not because I’m a tech-geek, I’m truly not, honest. I’m just very excited about the cutting edge, about achievements that push beyond everything that’s ever been done before. That’s why I’m so excitable about space exploration (and so bored and exasperated by the International Space Station) and anything else of that ilk. The world’s fastest car. Or the world’s tallest building (also frequently mentioned on this website).

But while I get a buzz from hearing about these things, there is a limit. If I were given the choice of spending money on constructing a kilometre-tall building (plans for which were recently announced in Kuwait) or spending money on poverty relief, I’d say let’s all live in bungalows.

At least that gets me back to the subject of poverty. Which is what I should be talking about here anyway. Cue the next update.
The A380, after we touched down at Singapore airport. The ‘nose-on’ shot above captures the unusual shape of the aircraft. It’s ovular, or egg-like. Which explains all that head-room. So I guess the tagline could be: “The A380, fry without getting poached.” (sorry, sorry)

2008 and all that

(Composite 180 degree image of Circular Quay with 116,000 tonne Cruise Ship, Sapphire Princess on the left, Harbour Bridge in the middle, and Opera House just visible through the trees on the right).

I can hardly believe it’s the 13th already. This update is soooo overdue. So without any further delay…

Sailing

One of the highlights of life since I got to Sydney was sailing Chris’ Taser dinghy in the Sydney harbour. It was a quiet day down at double-bay with much of gentrified Sydney having left town for the holidays.

(Tasers, like Chris' dinghy)

After much stretching of gibbets, curling boom lines and sheathing cleats (I have no idea what I’m talking about), the boat was ready and we wheeled her down to the water.

This is where the fun began. I hadn’t thought that boat launching could be so treacherous. In even a light wind, we managed to tip the boat over, fall out and slide about on the slimy bottom. After some assistance from experienced sailors (they had their names painted on the side of their boat – losers!) we found ourselves in the water,

Chris is a pretty good sailor and he was a pretty damn good teacher too! I started at the front of the boat, managing the ‘front sail’ (jib sail?) and we were soon making great progress, the boat tipped up at an angle and both of us with our feet in the feetstraps (footstraps?) leaning right out of the boat to keep us from capsizing.

(James and I head down to the beach!)

So mostly, we were tearing across the harbour with some skill. Though Chris did allow me to take the tiller (I’m sure I’ve got that one right) at one point with two hilarious episodes.

Turning the boat at speed is a pretty sudden, violent event. A sharp turn is essential to avoid losing speed, but not too sharp. On one particular turn I managed to turn a bit too fast, let go of the tiller and the next thing I knew I had my head under the water – in fact rushing through the water – with my feet still in the footstraps. Chris was able to reach over and pull me back into the boat, though in the panic I wasn’t able to pay due care to my shorts which were by now half-way down my backside, showing a good few inches of butt-crack!

With the sails out of control, thankfully the boat came to a halt. Unfortunately, when I looked behind me the Manly ferry was almost on top of us, with around a couple of hundred people seeing our predicament!

And, after a few near misses we did eventually capsize on our way back to the jetty. Actually, it was much easier to right the boat that I’d thought. And good fun actually!

Ocean Swim too far…

After my first sail in a dinghy, my next sporting achievement was to be my first ocean swim the following Sunday morning. And then the storms came. Not to Sydney but to the Central Coast. Though the weather in Sydney was good, the storms created a huge swell right down to Port Jackson, and Bondi was pretty heavily affected!

I went down for the training session on Friday night and the surf was big, real BIG. As we swam out I found I couldn’t calm down enough to breathe properly. The exertion of getting out beyond the waves had me out of breath and every time a huge wave came, I’d have to hold my breath as it washed over me. I was exhausted by the time I got beyond the surf, and then I had to swim back in.

(Left - fireworks explode from the Harbour Bridge.)

And then half way through I got absolutely bundled by a huge wave. When I came up, I’d lost my goggles. I got back to the beach and said to Spot, the coach, that I was going to have to call it a day as I’d lost my goggles and I was wrecked! But, in that typical aussie way, Spot laughed that off saying “You don’t see me wearing goggles. Come on, just get back out there.”

So I did last until the end of the session. But, with the forecast for the surf to get even bigger, I made the decision to skip the competition on the Sunday. I was back at Bondi the following Saturday and it was flat calm. Hopefully when I do get to a competition – probably after I get back from India now – the weather will be more like that than the previous weekend.

New Year

New Year in Sydney. Even the idea seems epic. After Christmas week, I was pretty much partied-out already. I would have been happy with any kind of night at New Year, but I was delighted with Circular Quay.

(Right - Keith and I meet some Scottish girls (!) on Hogmanay.)

Keith and I and a bunch of Peruvian friends had tickets for Cruise Bar. Despite incredible difficulties getting to the bar – a major problem on Hogmanay – it was a great venue. We met some nice people and of course the fireworks were immense.

Otherwise

Yeah, otherwise I’ve been partying hard and working hard. My room is looking more homely – photos to follow when I get my nice new canvas prints from my trip up on the walls. I’m getting better and better acquainted with Sydney’s nightspots and I’ve found a couple of new beaches around the harbour.

Lastly, my trip to India is booked! I fly out on the 21st and get back on the 1st of February. More about this soon. Should be epic…

Still didn’t mention the weather.


(Six Peruvians and two Scotsmen celebrate New Year in Sydney.)